Topic: PC Gaming

@Heavyarms55 Interesting! My first laptop when I started college was a Dell, and that thing was a champ! It lasted for about 7-8 years, and even then it still worked, it was just really slow. The last time I was back in America a few years ago, I pulled it out of my dad's basement to get some old pictures off of it and it was still chugging along just fine!

My next laptop after that one though was an HP and I hated that thing. Started having big problems with it just shy of 2 years in. Got my MacBook Pro after that, and while I love it and it still works great after like 7 years, I can't do much with it gaming-wise.

Can you wait for the sales .... ? Are you going somewhere for a custom design? What exactly do you want it for, etc, etc?

As for me, I can totally (and probably will) wait for sales. Again, just looking for a low-mid tier gaming laptop that has the capability to play anything I throw at it at at least 720p/30fps. If there is a good enough deal on something a bit higher end, I could be persuaded to splurge.

@BruceCM I just want a rough estimate on what I should look for in a laptop in the 1200-1500 dollar range that can play most games at least reasonably. Like, I don't need top tier 4K or anything, but I would like to be able to comfortably run games. And I feel like that should be easy to do in the price range.

Um, well, if I goto Acer's site, for instance & just ask it for 'gaming laptops', they start at $1100 .... So, unless you're getting it in good sales, you're limited to a only a couple of choices there? @Heavyarms55 No point recommending stuff that'd make it cost a lot more! Perhaps if you suggest brands you do like or something?

@ninfan also I didn't replace it I just added an ssd where I installed all of my day to day applications.

so it is just better storage

@Heavyarms55 I can only speak from my experience. At $1000, 3 years ago I got:

CPU: Intel i7-7700HQ
GPU: Nvidia 1050 Ti
RAM: 16GB (can't remember the type, but 16 GB should be your minimum target imo)
Storage: 128 SSD + 1 TB HD
Screen: 1080p 60 FPS, IPS

You should definitely get something better than that. With the next series of GPUs from AMD and Nvidia being rumored to release in the next few months (although the low-end cards of the series will take much longer to come out), you might be able to get a discount on laptops with the current series. If you're only looking to use if for games, some quad-core i5 should suit your needs and you might be able to get a better GPU out of that. I can't speak with confidence.

@klingki Low-end GPUs will probably still exceed your expectations. Don't know what ramifications next console generation will have on minimum specifications on PC. I wouldn't trust integrated graphics. If you don't have a time-frame in mind, I'd say wait for next console generation to start to get a more solid idea. I have no experience buying used, but older GPUs might hit that performance level at used prices, although your battery life will likely be garbage unless you can replace it.

@ninfan Well kind of I guess. They are more expensive but if you get a 150gb SSD for $25 you can put windows, chrome, discord, other daily applications (maybe even smaller games) and then use the hard drive to store the big games and files/videos. An ssd doesn't have a disk inside of it like the harddrive does and it's faster. Definitely worth the investment I can't say how quick my PC boots up now because of it. RAM isn't that important unless you do multitasking.

@Heavyarms55

What GPU the system is equipped with will have the largest effect on its capacity to run games unless somehow it is also equipped with a very low end processor. If you are considering a laptop, can look at one of these sites to see the specs and potential performance of its GPU.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Comparison-of-Laptop-Graphics-C...

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/

Is it a requirement that it be a laptop?
Building a desktop will give more flexibility and likely a lower cost for similar performance.

@ALazyUsername128 It doesn't need to be a laptop, but I'll likely be moving soon and a desktop is a lot more to ship. I suppose I probably should just wait until after I move but...

Well, you can get about twice as much PC for the same money, @Heavyarms55 .... Along with, for example, black Friday deals, etc, so if you can wait for a bit ....

@Lucarianzx was the SSD difficult to install, did you install it yourself. good price $25.

@ninfan I installed it myself and it wasn't that hard to install, it was just a hassle to get the side panel off of the PC and then put the SSD in it. The only thing that's a little annoying is you need to make sure that you have a SATA cable that connects the SSD to the motherboard. It's definitely worth it.

I'm hoping somebody can help me out. I'm trying to go through the King's Quest series because I love it. I finally for the first time ever beat KQ7 and am trying to play 8. I still have my old CD so put it in, it installed and everything, but it crashes on start up every time. I looked it up and found that Windows 10 usually prevents you from running these old CD rom games. There are hacks you can do, but that's not my thing. I then found to my delight that gog.com has it (I got 1-7 on Steam, but they don't have 8). It was on sale for $5, so I thought it wasn't much of a waste even if I could have gotten it to work for free. I downloaded and installed it, and it lasts for 5-10 seconds before crashing every time, often before I can even get off of the title screen. I would have thought that Gog would have done whatever needed to be done to make it work properly, but it still doesn't. Is there something I can do with my computer settings or whatever to make it run? Thanks.

Just to check, are you running it in 'compatibility mode', @Xyphon22 .... ? It actually seems to work better NOT doing that! Also, are you using 'resume'? Since the 'load save' options also seems to work better Unfortunately, if it is issues with your graphics cards, as I hear it has plenty with Intel ones, I can't help, since I'm on AMD Radeon, which seem to have a lot less problems with it

@BruceCM I'm not changing anything, so if it's running in compatibility mode it's doing it by itself. And I haven't been able to start a game yet, so I'm not resuming or loading a save. I tried it again this morning and it seems that if I just leave it on the title screen or click "options" I can do that and it will keep running, but if I click "Replay intro movie" (even though an intro movie never played) it will crash immediately. And if I click "New game" it will let me choose a difficulty level and then begin loading for a few seconds before crashing.

https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality

By the way, just dropping a link if anyone wants to grab a huge bundle (albeit there's tons of... not so good games, there's also a lot of super great games here to grab)

So just trying to get anything to work because I hadn't yet, I went into the Graphics options and changed it from DirectDraw to 3Dfx. I don't know what any of that is, but it allowed the intro video to play. Unfortunately, it still freezes and crashes in exactly the same spot when I try to start a new game. The screen changes and says "loading files to hard drive" with a bar at the bottom, and it always fills up to the same spot about 1/4 full before stopping and crashing.

@JaxonH

I can't believe it's happening. But it is. Sony is losing Persona exclusivity.

https://www.gematsu.com/2020/06/persona-4-golden-coming-to-pc...